


Stalemate

by SpaceFarm



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Chess Metaphors, F/M, Fluff, They love each other, and they're happy, cus that's a tag, so it's kinda fluff, sorta???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 17:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17584793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceFarm/pseuds/SpaceFarm
Summary: “It’s ridiculous,” he continued, shaking his head. “Just like stalemate. We make every right move, we do every right thing, and somehow, because of one law—”“It’s an important law, General,” she noted, as if on instinct.“—Because of one important law,” he amended, and he couldn’t find the energy to smile but he tried, just for her, “we’re trapped. How do we stand it?”





	Stalemate

**Author's Note:**

> Another piece of Royai I wrote back when I first watched FMA:B. I love these two dorks and will forever hold out hope that they can really be together the way they want someday.

“Stalemate,” Roy said, eyeing the board. “That’s a first.”

The mess hall was always quiet at this time of night, and Riza’s murmur of agreement filled the room, echoing back off cracked stone walls and hard plastic tables. Roy shuffled the pieces off the board, and she joined in, separating the black from white, clearing and organizing the board with the sluggish efficiency only disciplined insomniacs like themselves could ever hope to develop.

“Another round, Lieutenant?” he asked, grinning. “Or do you finally admit defeat?”

“You know I don’t lose, General,” she said, and it pleased him to see her exhausted expression tug up in a half-smile. “Set it up again, and I’ll find us another pot of coffee.”

“Thanks.” She rose and crossed the room before turning into the storeroom doorway, leaving him in an empty mess hall. 

It was easy enough to set the pieces back up, and the process took around thirty seconds. Unfortunately, a pot of coffee took several minutes to brew, and Roy only managed to stare at the completed board for about thirty seconds before deciding that that difference was entirely unacceptable and unnecessary, and, additionally, an insult to all things good in the world. 

But he had to admit he was lucky that they had managed even this. He held the title of general and diplomat both, now, and he had paperwork stacked a mile high, a terrifyingly long list of people waiting to speak with him, and a perchance for dropping dead asleep whenever the world graced him with a moment’s quiet. 

This chess match they had somehow stumbled into playing at o’ four hundred was a blessing—a chance to catch up and catch their breath and pretend for a moment that they didn't carry the entire world on their shoulders. It was a  _ blessing _ , he reminded himself, and so it was childish of him to spite the five minutes they happened to be apart. 

And yet, when she came back, she found him glaring. 

“Did the pieces offend you, sir?” she asked, handing him a steaming mug and slipping into her seat.

“No more than usual,” he said. He sipped at his coffee, eyeing her as she did the same. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About…” He drummed his fingers along the side of his cup. “About stalemate.”

She raised an eyebrow over the rim of her cup, a distinct message that read,  _ you know you can go to sleep if you’re tired.  _ Roy scowled in response.

“It was a perfectly reasonable thought,” he said. “Well, mostly reasonable, anyways. Have you ever considered all the different factors that go into stalemate?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“I’m not surprised. The thought had never occurred to me either,” Roy continued, taking a sip of his coffee, “until I happened to stare at a chess board for two hours straight in the middle of the night.”

Riza snorted into her cup, and Roy pushed on, the words feeling right in his mouth as they blended with the taste of bitter coffee and earthy barrack air. 

“But if you stop to think about it, stalemate sounds like some impossible event,” he continued. “Every move, canceling out, only because someone gets trapped at the very end? It’s ridiculous. What about all the pieces taken? What about all the strategy? Why isn’t that taken into account in the final scoring of the game so they can appoint a winner?”

“It’s the way the game is played,” she said, and Roy didn’t miss the amusement in her voice. “It’s the way life works, more often than not—one wrong move can land you in an early grave if you’re not careful.” Riza tilted her head. “Are you going somewhere with this, sir, or are you as tired as you look?”

“Yes.” He paused, grinning at her. “On both accounts, Lieutenant.”

“Go on, then,” she said, smiling easily. 

He moved the words around his mouth, rocking them back and forth with his tongue, building them up in a way that seemed a little easier to say. 

“What do you think, Lieutenant—do our moves matter?”

“Our moves?” Riza repeated. “You mean our actions.”

“Right. In…” Roy waved a hand, gesturing at the space between them, his expression melting into something soft but frustrated. “In  _ this _ sense.”

There was a moment of breathless silence in which it was hard not to regret the words—regret the way that Riza’s eyes widened ever so slightly, regret the way her grip tightened on her cup with white-knuckled pressure. Regret bringing up this same old dilemma, this same old pain. He was sure, one of these days, that Riza would politely tell him to keep his mouth shut on the subject until he kept his promise and became Fuhrer. 

But for tonight, Riza only blinked, setting down her coffee on the table with a dull clack.

“General,” she said, slowly, giving the title a little more emphasis than was strictly necessary. “I think you should clarify your metaphor before I respond to that.”

“You know what I’m asking.” Roy’s fingers found his own mug, and he shrugged. “Are all these things we do, these meetings and our codes and the way we work side by side—are we just dancing around victory? Locking ourselves in our own stalemate and losing the chance for more, just because the final move seems a little too grand?” He held his mug to his mouth, breathing in the steam. “But I know what you’re going to say.”

“That we shouldn’t be having this conversation in the mess?” she asked, voice low.

“That sometimes stalemate is the best you can do,” he said, finding her eyes, knowing he was treading dangerous water but too far gone in his words to care. “That sometimes people have no choice but to settle for stalemate, because a draw is the best you can hope for given the difficulty of the match. You’d say that there are steps we just can’t take, or we risk losing everything. We’ve both said it often enough.” He exhaled, emptying his lungs with one long breath. “ _ I’ve  _ said it often enough.”

That had her picking up her coffee again, taking a deep sip, and not quite meeting his eyes until she put her cup back down. 

“So, why are you bringing it up now?” There was a strand of concern in her voice, a silent  _ are you alright _ trailing at the end of her words, and Roy felt his throat constrict. 

“I don’t know.” He grinned, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Probably only because neither of us have slept for the past week, and I’m delirious. But, then, maybe there’s a part of me that wants to believe things have changed enough. I’m a shoe-in for Führer, our original goal, and we’ve given Ishval back their land, we’ve changed the world so much already—” He sucked in a breath, running a hand through his hair with a dark chuckle— “It seems like it should be enough, doesn’t it? Of course,  _ of course,  _ I want to give more, Lieutenant, but—”

“You’re exhausted.” Riza’s eyes turned soft, and Roy was suddenly,  _ overwhelmingly  _ grateful that she was there to cut to the middle of his ramblings. “You give so much—”

“So do you, Lieutenant,” he cut in, voice soft.

“We both give so much,” she continued, shooting him a fond look, “and the world is better for it, but we’re not.” She ran a thumb along the handle of her mug. “That’s not to say I regret it. We owe this to the Ishvalans and to our country. But…”

“We’re exhausted,” Roy echoed, voice catching with the strain of the revelation. “Completely exhausted.”

“It won’t last forever.” There was a catch in her voice, too, but she paused to release the tension with a sigh. “Someday you  _ will  _ be Fuhrer. Someday we’ll finish our work here in Ishval and get a good night’s rest, and someday, when the cards are finally where we want them to be, we’ll…” She hesitated. “We’ll break this stalemate.”

Roy looked up to find her eyes sparkling. His own, embarrassingly enough, were prickling and hot. 

“It’s easy to feel tired of it,” she said. Their hands were on the table, mere inches from each other, and she stared at the space between them with an aching sort of grief visible in the lines of her mouth. “Sometimes the codes and the hoping and the tasks we tackle together just aren’t enough. I’m at your side every moment of every day, but I’m not really even allowed to  _ talk  _ to you.”

“It’s ridiculous,” he continued, shaking his head. “Just like stalemate. We make every right move, we do every right thing, and somehow, because of one law—”

“It’s an important law, General,” she noted, as if on instinct.

“—Because of one  _ important _ law,” he amended, and he couldn’t find the energy to smile but he tried, just for her, “we’re trapped. How do we stand it?”

“Because we have a mission,” Riza said, as if that explained everything. 

And it did, of course. Riza always managed that. Her ability to make quick work of worlds of information—cutting through worlds of muddled thoughts, torn emotions, and hurt deep enough to make your stomach churn simply so she could find the truth and hold fast to it—was never anything less than exceptional. 

_ She  _ was never anything less than exceptional. 

“Would you break the stalemate with me—now, today—” Roy said, the words quiet and torn from his mouth despite the danger he knows they hold— “if I asked you to, Lieutenant Hawkeye?”

“Yes.” There’s no hesitation, and he loves her for it. Her next words are forceful—more of a command than an observation. “But you’re not going to.”

He stared at her, and for a moment, his throat was raw, drying up under the pressure and heat of a thousand arguments, a thousand complaints, and a single determined, repeated request. But then, as always, she stared back, eyes kind but unyielding, and the pressure slipped, numbly retreating back into the recesses of his thoughts.  

“No.” He shook his head and took a moment to scrub hard at his face, pressing his palms into his eyes. “No, you’re right.”

When he looked up, he found her looking at him, her expression regretful and her hand a little closer than before. He mustered a smile, swallowing.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I shouldn’t be complaining about all this when I know there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s not fair to either of us.”

“Don’t apologize,” she said. He opened his mouth, and she cut him off with, “Really. It’s nice to hear you ask again, if I’m being honest. I thought you might be getting tired of me.”

“Never,” he said, putting too much pressure on the word, but he couldn’t regret it when he saw the flush on Riza’s face, the way her mouth curled up into an involuntary smile. “You know that.”

There was a long pause, then, and Roy took the time to stare at her, taking in every angle of her face—every scar, loose hair, and line that had accumulated over the past decade of stress and war. She was as radiant now as she ever had been, and when the mess door opened and a sudden onslaught of noise came with it, that moment of tearing away his gaze felt like a punch to the gut.

Men poured in, chattering and calling out, and Roy pulled out his watch, cursing inwardly. It was the change of shift already. The mess wouldn’t be quiet for the rest of the day. He looked up at Riza, frowning. 

“Looks like we’ll have to talk another time, General,” she said, and he nodded. 

“Another time, Lieutenant.” 

Riza stood, then added, “Thank you. For everything. I’ve… missed talking with you like this, sir.”

The statement was on the boundary of bold, surrounded as they were by the rest of the camp, and Roy was forced to hold down a laugh. He took the chance to clear his throat instead, watching as Riza turned to leave.

“I enjoyed it too, Lieutenant.” He watched her move towards the door. “We’ll have to arrange a rematch, so I can finally stop going so easy on you—next time I won’t let you escape with just a stalemate.”

She paused in the doorway and turned back, a smile playing on her mouth.

“I’m looking forward to it, sir,” she said, her tone crisp with agreement. And then she was gone, leaving Roy to clear the chess board with a grin of his own.

  
  



End file.
